A deputy collector from the Bureau of Customs (BOC) on Wednesday insisted that the magnetic lifters recovered in a warehouse in Cavite did contain an estimated P6.8 billion worth of shabu as shown by x-ray images, but BOC Commissioner Isidro Lapeña did not take action on the matter.

In August, PDEA claimed that P6.8 billion worth of shabu was unloaded from four lifting equipment at a warehouse in General Mariano Alvarez, Cavite. PDEA said the lifters came into the country with the shipment that yielded P4.3 billion worth of shabu at the Manila International Container Port three days earlier.

PDEA raided the warehouse in Barangay F. Reyes after a caretaker informed authorities about the lifters that arrived on June 14. The lifters had reportedly been emptied by the time PDEA operatives got to the warehouse.

No residue of shabu had been found on the lifters but PDEA said K-9 units detected traces of the illegal drug.

Lapeña told the House inquiry on the matter that the magnetic lifters tested negative for dangerous drugs.

Duterte said PDEA's claim was "pure speculation" and no shabu was found in the magnetic lifters. —Jamil Santos/KG, GMA News

Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapena finally acknowledged on Wednesday that there was indeed reason to support claims that P6.4 billion worth of shabu had been slipped into the country, apparently part of a large-scale narcotics smuggling uncovered last August.

BOC chief Isidro Lapeña (Alberto Garcia)

“With what’s going on now, (based on) the circumstantial evidence and testimonies, as an investigator I tend to bleieve that indeed may laman iyan (referring to the magnetic lifters) that is designed to contain certain cargoes,” Lapena said during yesterday’s resumption of the joint congressional probe into the P6.4 billion drug smuggling incident.

Earlier during the hearing conducted jointly by the House Committees on Good Government and on Dangerous Drugs, Lapena claimed receiving reports that a P20 million fund was raised by drug lords to discredit him.

Testifying before the House panels, Customs inspector Jimmy Guban confessed that out of the six magnetic lifters that were sneaked into the country, four which contained illegal drugs were cleared by them while the two were seized.

The two cargoes containing 500 kilograms of metamphetamine hydrochloride with an estimated cost of P4.3 billion were seized by operatives of the Philipine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and BOC at the Manila Inernational Container Terminal (MICT) on August 7.

On August 8, four similar magnetic lifters were discovered at a warehouse in General Mariano Alvarez, Cavite. All reportedly contained traces of shabu.

The new development in the congressional inquiry was triggered by the intense grilling of witnesses by Antipolo City Rep. Romeo Acop, the former chief of the Philippine National Police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.

When asked by Acop to comment on the testimonies of witnesses, Lapena said: “With these devleopments, I would tend to belief that indeed there was content that had been peddled by these drug syndicate.”

Guban, who had been ordered detained by senators for allegedly lying during a Senate probe of the same incident, confessed to Acop that what happened to the shabu shipment was a usual occurrence whenever they discovered contraband being spirited into the country.

Earlier, Deputy Collector Lourdes Mangaoang, the former head of the BOC X-Ray Inspection Project, endured warnings of contempt by congressmen who grilled her over her claim of a coverup in the alleged smuggling of an estimated P6.8 billion into the country.

The hearing conducted jointly by the Committee on Dangerous Drugs chaired by Surigao del Norte Rep. Ace Barbers and Committee on Government headed by Camiguin Rep. Xavier Jesus Romualdo lasted for over six hours but was marred by contradicting statements of the witnesses.

Mangaoang backed her claim that the magnetic lifters recovered in a warehouse in Cavite had contained shabu based not only on the x-ray images but also by the results of the investigation conducted by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Administration.

Claiming an impeccable track record in Customs x-ray processes, Mangaoang said based on her experience and training, it was clear that a huge shipment of shabu had indeed been smuggled into the country, and this can be supported by reports that the “market is flooded” with the illegal substance.

However, she admitted that x-ray examination alone cannot determine whether there was indeed illegal drugs inside the magnetic lifters.

Mangaoang faced a hostile panel of congressmen who implied that she may have testified against Lapena in retaliation to his order assigning her to the Compliance Monitoring Unit, considered an insignificant post.

At one point, Mangaoang protested the grilling she had to endure and the accusation that she had an axe to grind agianst Lapena.

“You invited me here as a witness bakit ang dami ninyong sinasabi na ill-will. Kung hindi ninyo ako kailangan, I will leave (You invited me here as a witness but you are accusing me of harboring ill-will. I will leave if you don’t need my testimony),” she warned.

At this juncture, Acop warned the BOC official that she may be held in contempt for disrespectful conduct, prompting Mangaoang to apologize.

Acop noted that Mangaoang adverse testimony against the BOC and Lapenal was the result of an “Improper motive” because she was sacked from her previous positions.

Mangaoang responded by insisting that she never complained being sent to a far-away assignment like Bicol but challenged Lapena’s order to assign her to CMU, which is a reportedly violation of civil service rules.

During the hearing, Lapena revealed that he had become the object of a P20 million mudslinging campaign.

“I was informed that the players have put up a sinking fund of P20million that will be used against me because my reformative effortsare already hurting their operation,” said Lapeña

Reacting to Mangaoang’s testimony, X-ray inspectors John Mar Morales and Manuel Martinez said they examined the four magnetic lifters alleged to have contained shabu and found nothing wrong with them.

Morales, who was trained by Mangaoang, said he found nothing unusual inside the magnetic lifters when he examined during x-ray examination.

“Makikita natin na may equivalent density siya na parang hindi tumutugon na may laman iyong loob,” he said. (We saw that there has been no equivalent density that will show there was something inside)

Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) seized some P900,000 worth of shabu in a buy-bust operation on Saturday at a mall parking area in Alabang, Muntinlupa, the agency announced Wednesday.

Arrested in the bust was suspect Rassive Abo Tumanggong, 29. He was arrested by agents of the PDEA and the Station Drug Enforcement Unit (SDEU) of the Muntinlupa City Police.

Recovered from the suspect were nine pieces of suspected shabu estimated to weigh about 500 grams.

Tumanggong is now facing charges for violation of Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, PDEA said. /muf

A former Ormoc City Drug Enforcement Unit chief and now assigned at the Eastern Visayas police regional office in Palo, Leyte was ambushed on Tuesday.

Unidentified gunmen shot Police Senior Inspector Joseph Joevil Young at about 7:10 am in front of his residence at Barangay Buri of the town while he was about to leave for work with his two children on board his silver Toyota Vios.

MANILA -- The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) on Wednesday reiterated that samples from the intercepted “shabu” (crystal meth) shipment at the Manila International Container Port (MICP) and evidence seized from recent anti-drug operations have the same profile.

“Same profile of drug samples means same source, same manufacturer, and same method used in the production of the illegal drug. We are confident that the newfound scientific evidence will corroborate our claim that large amounts of shabu from the emptied magnetic lifters in a warehouse in GMA, Cavite, are circulating in our streets,” PDEA Director General Aaron N. Aquino said in a statement.

Based on investigation, the shabu came from Taiwan, while Malaysia was the transshipment point.

Chinese syndicates operating in the Golden Triangle Area of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Laos and Myanmar) are believed to be responsible for the illegal drug shipment.

Consigned to Vecaba Trading, the intercepted MICP shabu shipment came from Malaysia, while the emptied lifters found in GMA, Cavite were smuggled in through a consignee-for-hire, SMYD Trading, with Vietnam as the country of origin, Aquino said.

“Malaysia and Vietnam were only used as transshipment points. The shipments may have different points of origin, but we cannot deny (that) the intercepted illegal drugs came from the same source,” he said.

Four persons of interest, including two Chinese nationals linked to the intercepted shipment in MICP, are now facing charges before the Office of the State Prosecutor, Manila.

One of the foreign respondents was implicated in the case for his involvement as an alleged consignee through Vecaba Trading, according to the records provided by Benline Agencies Philippines, Inc., which acted as the local agent in facilitating the shipment of the intercepted shabu cargo.

According to Aquino, the respondent’s given address, Unit 4, Lot 1-8, CRS Subdivision, Barangay F. Reyes, GMA, Cavite, and the address of the warehouse where the four magnetic lifters were abandoned is the same.

Impurity drug profiling is a scientific tool that applies chemical and physical techniques to determine if a relation exists between illicit drug seizures and the significance of such relationship.

A similarity match or strong correlation of samples, where the correlation value is greater or equal to 0.98 (range is 0.98-1.0) obtained from a statistical tool and cluster analysis, means they came from the same manufacturer and same method of production.

Profiling analysis between samples from the intercepted shipment in MICP and bulk shabu seizures from recent entrapment operations conducted by PDEA in Sitio Tenorio, Barangay Awang DOS, Maguindanao; along Congressional Ave., Barangay Bahay Toro, Quezon City; along Ronquillo St., Sta. Cruz, Manila; and in Alabang Town Center, Muntinlupa, showed that the impurity patterns are of high similarity, where the correlation value between samples is 0.999.

The procedure undertaken by the PDEA Laboratory Service for the profiling of shabu is similar to the one established and validated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The same software used for the statistical data analysis of impurity patterns is also used in drug forensic development in Japan, and was introduced by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to PDEA.

As a matter of policy and practice, PDEA Laboratory Service has been conducting impurity drug profiling since March 2014, pursuant to Section 4e of Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) Regulation No. 1 Series of 2002.

“PDEA wishes to clarify that the agency is just proving a point. We are not doing this to discredit any counterpart agencies but rather only to support our claims that we believe shabu supply is abundant mainly because the illegal drugs are similar to the one recovered from the magnetic lifters at MICP, as impurity profiling revealed,” the PDEA chief noted. (PNA)

MANILA, Philippines — The government’s fight against illegal drugs has been gaining ground, according to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), citing the 110,395 anti-drug operations conducted from July 2016 to September 2018.

PDEA spokesman Derrick Arnold Carreon said the figure included 2,336 operations from Aug. 31 this year.

“There is no slowing down in the operations since the aim is for the country to have drug-free barangays,” Carreon said in a forum held at the Philippine Information Agency in Quezon City yesterday.

Figures provided by the PDEA showed that from July 2016 to September this year, 8,766 of the country’s 42,044 barangays were declared drug-free.

“These barangays are spread out in Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao, and the challenge is for these areas to remain drug-free,” Carreon said, adding these are success indicators since the number of drug-free barangays increased to 8,766 from 5,000.

The number of drug personalities arrested for the same period is at 158,424, including 3,231 individuals apprehended from Aug. 31 this year.

Drug personalities who died in anti-drug operations were at 4,948, including the 94 recorded from Aug. 31 to Sept. 30.

For the same period, the PDEA estimated the total value of seized illegal drugs at P25.01 billion. Of the amount, P891 million was seized starting on Aug. 31, 2018.

The total amount of shabu seized during the same period was placed at P18.27 billion, P878 million of which was seized starting on Aug. 31.

Authorities said that 1,076.01 kilos of shabu that were seized came from smuggling, while the 410.07 kilos were manufactured.

Carreon said the PDEA would destroy on Friday at least 1.4 tons of shabu in Trece Martires City. He said this huge volume of illegal drugs has long been with the PDEA and needs to be disposed of.

Carreon said the PDEA respects a statement issued by the Philippine National Police (PNP), which contradicted the anti-drug agency’s claim that there has been a decline in the street price of shabu.

The PDEA attributed the supposed decline in shabu prices to the four magnetic lifters that slipped past the Bureau of Customs. It earlier expressed suspicion that the magnetic lifters contained about a ton of shabu, which found its way to the streets.

At the same forum, Police Supt. Kimberly Molitas, PNP deputy spokesperson, said the PNP chief is not contradicting PDEA and that what the PNP chief meant with his statement was that whether the price of the illegal drug goes up or down, they would just be supporting PDEA operations.

“The phrase ‘walang pinagkaiba’ did not mean that the drug prices didn’t change. It means it doesn’t matter either way,” Molitas said.

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